Arts & Entertainment

Best Middle Finger To the Music Industry Dallas 2010 - FeelerThe Toadies

In 1997, three years after taking the nation by storm with their still-holds-up-quite-well major label debut, Rubberneck, the now-seminal North Texas rockers in the Toadies went back into the studio to record their follow-up. The resulting album was Feeler, a disc that the band now looks back upon as perhaps the best in its catalog. Thing is, Interscope Records, to which the band was signed at the time, didn't agree. In fact, it straight up hated the sucker and just scrapped it. And with that move, the Toadies' eventual breakup in the early '00s was essentially cast. Sure, the band came back to Interscope and released Hell Below/Stars Above in 2001, but the damage had been done; the band had all but been forgotten in a world suddenly obsessed with nu-metal and rap-rock. But the Toadies would eventually get their revenge. After re-forming in 2008 and releasing their well-received comeback record, No Deliverance, on local label Kirtland Records, someone pitched the idea of re-recording Feeler and putting it out for the fans to finally judge; after all, Interscope may have still owned the recordings, but the Toadies owned the songs. Earlier this year, the band got its revenge, releasing Feeler on Kirtland and continuing its resurgence—a resurgence, mind you, that finds the band bigger now than it ever really was in its supposed heyday. Oh and one more thing: Releasing Feeler on Kirtland gave the band the chance to finally do something it had always wanted to do, but never could while on Interscope—talk shit in the press about the terrible, terrible judgment of the major-label hacks who clearly don't know a good thing when they hear it.